Polish man sentenced to over 16 years in prison for kidnapping model

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MILAN (Reuters) - A Polish man living in Britain was sentenced to more than 16 years in an Italian prison on Monday for kidnapping a British model in Milan last July.

Chloe Ayling, 20, told Italian police she had been lured to a photo shoot in Italy’s fashion capital last summer, abducted and held captive for six days. Her lawyer said the plot was to sell her for sex in an online auction unless a ransom was paid.

Since returning to Britain, Ayling has given a number of media interviews in which she said she was drugged, gagged, bound, stuffed into a bag, put into the boot of a car and driven to a village near Turin.

She denied suggestions that the kidnapping was a hoax after it was reported she had gone on a shopping trip with her alleged captor, Lukasz Pawel Herba.

Italian law foresees a sentence of 25 to 30 years for kidnapping and extortion, but prosecutors asked the court in Milan to make allowance for the short duration of the abduction and a narcissistic personality disorder from which Herba was said to suffer.

“Chloe was treated like something used to satisfy his evil narcissistic needs,” prosecutor Paolo Storari said in court.

Besides the prison sentence of 16 years and nine months, the court also ordered Herba to pay an initial 60,000 euros in damages to Ayling, who was a civil plaintiff in the trial. Final damages will be set by a civil court.